la st jean baptiste

i have memories from my childhood, filled with street parties, bbq, dressing up in red-white-and-blue and trying streamers on my trike before parading down the street with my siblings and friends. it was a celebration of my french canadian heritage. it was la st jean baptiste. 

la st jean (as it's known) has its roots in paganism, as many of our now-christian holidays do. it used to be a celebration of the summer solstice on june 21st until sometime in the 1st millenia (AD) when the holiday was appropriated by the christians and became la st-jean baptiste. it came to canada with the european immigrants (discovering the new land)  and has been celebrated in "canada" since the 1600's (some countries in europe still celebrate it too: france, sweden, denmark and lithuania, etc) it didn't become a patriotic event for quebec until the mid 1800's. 

in 1977,  june 24th was declared as "la fete national du quebec", which is a somewhat controversial title to the celebration given that quebec isn't officially a nation. but whatever. after that time, it became a stat holiday for all quebecois, not just the catholics or french-canadian (yes, there are non-french quebecois folk). the celebrations slowly became more secularized until they are what we know now: a big rockin' party.

scattered amongst the province are musicians, festivals, parades, family-friendly events, and terraces over-run with drunken people. la st-jean is a celebration of all things quebec. no other province, as a whole, recognizes the holiday though many areas of french canada do have their own celebrations. hence the streamers, red white and blue and street parties of my childhood. many quebecers were surprised that i knew about la st-jean (because clearly, not being from quebec denies me rights as a french-canadian...but that's another post) but it really was a fun time growing up.

unfortunately for quebec, the weather did not cooperate this year. at least not in the montreal area. it rained all day. off and on but mostly on. grey skies. wind gusting. i for one, did not attend any festivities for lack of motivation to go outside in the rain. sad, i know. i would've liked to immerse myself in some quebec-culture (yes, its different from my own french-canadianism), listen to traditional french music, curse the rest of canada for not embracing this holiday as its own and maybe (just maybe) eat a poutine or 2. 

xo